ence,"--she glanced up at him apprehensively, whereupon, lest he
seemed to have erred in fact, he added,--"as you made us realize in
your paper."

"It is so nice to have your appreciation," she gurgled. "Often I feel
it almost futile to try to influence our cold parish audiences; their
attitude is so stolid, so unimaginative. As you must have realized, in
the pulpit, they are so hard to lead into untrodden paths. Let us take
the way home by the lane," she added coyly, leading off the road down
a sheltered by-way.

The lane was rough, and the lady, tightly and lightly shod, stumbled
neatly and grasped her escort's arm for support--and retained it for
comfort.

"What horizons your sermons have spread before us--and, yet,"--she
hesitated,--"I often wonder, as my eyes wander over the congregation,
how many besides myself, really hear your message, really see what
_you_ see."

Her hand trembled on his arm, and Maxwell was a little at a loss,
though anxious not to seem unresponsive to Virginia's enthusiasm for
spiritual vision.

"I feel that my first attention has to be given to the simpler
problems, here in Durford," he replied. "But I am glad if I haven't
been dull, in the process."

"Dull? No indeed--how can you say that! To my life--you will
understand?" (she glanced up with tremulous flutter of eyelids) "--you
have brought so much helpfulness and--and warmth." She sighed
eloquently.

Maxwell was no egotist, and was always prone to see only an impersonal
significance in parish compliments. A more self-conscious subject for
confidences would have replied less openly.

"I am glad--very glad. But you must not think that the help has been
one-sided. You have seconded my efforts so energetically--indeed I
don't know what I could have accomplished without such whole-hearted
help as you and Mrs. Burke and others have given."

To the optimistic Virginia the division of the loaves and fishes of
his personal gratitude was scarcely heeded. She cherished her own
portion, and soon magnified it to a basketful--and soon, again, to a
monopoly of the entire supply. As he gave her his hand at the door of
Willow Bluff, she was in fit state to invest that common act of
friendliness with symbolic significance of a rosy future.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

HEPSEY GOES A-FISHING

Mrs. Burke seemed incapable of sitting still, with folded hands, for
any length of time; and when the stress of her attention to household